Case Study: The Eurocopter Group streamlines aircraft door development and cuts design time with Altair

The Eurocopter Group - Customer Case Study

The Eurocopter Group, a division of EADS that designs commercial and military helicopters, needed to speed and automate the complex, safety-critical development and certification of aircraft closure systems (doors) while meeting strict requirements for strength, stiffness, kinematics, weight and manufacturability. To achieve faster, repeatable CAE workflows and respond quickly to late design changes, The Eurocopter Group adopted Altair’s HyperWorks suite (including HyperMesh and HyperView) and OptiStruct for modeling, visualization and topology optimization.

Using Altair’s tools and scripting capabilities, Eurocopter automated batch meshing, standardized model creation, and integrated proprietary material and rivet databases to harmonize pre/post-processing and speed analyses. With Altair, Eurocopter cut stress-model build times from months to weeks, reduced a door support arm’s weight by ~20%, shortened turnaround from three months to three weeks (a 75% design-time reduction), and significantly improved overall CAE cycle times and repeatability across the company.

The Eurocopter Group